Thursday, 17 October 2013

So, how's school?

People keep asking me how my eldest son is getting on at school. He has been going for over a month now. In the first week, he was quite excited by the newness of the experience, especially the independent commute! However, he complained about being bored in lessons. We told him it was very early days, and the teachers would be sussing out their new students and settling into the new term. "Give it time", we said. Two weeks in, we had tears and angry outbursts and he asked if he could stop going. I think he felt angry at himself because he knows that school is not our choice for him. Rather, he has chosen to be there. It was tempting to just say, "Oh, come back to unschooling. Don't worry about it." But he has made a commitment to the school, and a lot has been invested in getting him all the uniform and equipment, so two weeks didn't really seem long enough to make a fair assessment. We encouraged him to keep going, throw himself into the opportunity and see what school was all about. Interestingly, he told us he felt like a free-range chicken now confined to a battery cage. I encountered a similar description recently in "The Teenage Liberation handbook - How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education" by Grace Llewellyn. She quotes Colin Roch, a 12 year-old unschooler writing in John Holt's Growing Without Schooling publication, No. 78, who said, "Comparing me to those who are conventionally schooled is like comparing the freedoms of a wild stallion to those of cattle in a feedlot." It's a powerful image.

After our conversations, though, our boy seemed to throw himself into school life with more resolve. He told me about a challenge for the year given to inspire the boys to earn a certain high number of merits. Our extrinsically motivated son, who will do anything for a scout badge, told me quietly but assuredly, "I want that award". And he has been earning a steady flow of merits, and has only had a few detentions so far - for misdemeanours such as forgetting books and homework rather than for any rudeness or poor behaviour. He has been elected form charity rep and spoke in assembly today about an event he is organising to raise money for a cancer charity. He has come home and got on with various projects and pieces of homework, organising himself and trying hard at subjects which are not his most comfortable. So, all-in-all, he is on a steep learning curve. Best of all, he tells us he enjoys being with his friends. And, to my delight, he shows no signs yet, of losing the unschooler element of himself. He came home a few days ago telling me he had been interested to read about Buddhism in his RE lesson. He had a homework assignment to answer some ultimate questions as if he were a Buddhist. "Better to talk to someone who is a Buddhist," he said, and proceeded to contact a local Buddhist centre we visited a while ago. He made an appointment to interview one of the monks and I drove him up there this evening where he asked his questions and took a video and photographs to share with his class. I was impressed at his mature and respectful attitude to the whole undertaking. And it was self-initiated. Wonderful. So, I suppose it is going alright ... for the moment.

Last night we went to the welcome evening for new parents. It is a long time since I went into school as a parent, and it was so busy and noisy. I had forgotten. We sat there and were 'sold' the school's vision and strengths. I found myself feeling sad and confined ... And I do not mean to be too down on the school because I know that, as schools go, it is a 'good' one, whatever that really means. But I came home, and had a look on the website at the curriculum, and I noticed the emphasis on helping your son to revise and retain the information he acquires in lessons, and the emphasis on testing, exams and results. And I sigh to myself. This is the system. A friend of mine posted a link to an article on a social networking site yesterday. It is about repatriation. She shared it with me because I know what it is like to move between countries, to be changed by the experience, and to struggle to fit in anywhere. (Our family lived for some years in Turkey.) As I read the article and looked at the illustrations, I thought, "This could equally be applied to unschooling." The problem is that once you have moved from the culture of school to the freedom of unschooling, you are changed by the experience, and you view school culture differently, as an outsider. Watching out son last night, sitting between us at the parents' welcome event, I could see that we are not partakers in the product, the system, rather we sit there observing it, analysing it, apart from it somehow. It is difficult to explain, but if you read the following article, we are triangles - in more ways than one. And, though that can be a lonely thing at times, I cannot help but be thankful that we can think outside the box.

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Reluctant Radical

Home education - home based learning - is unusual in the U.K. I feel like a reluctant radical, yet it continues to be a liberating journey, despite the frustrations and misunderstanding. Learn more about our journey towards a more autonomous education here. My husband and I live in the West Midlands. We have home educated our 4 sons (2 are now at college, 2 continue to learn from home). I informally research education outside of school, and he works as a freelance teacher.

I offer workshops on Mentoring Self-Directed Learners, and am willing and able to speak on the subject of autonomous learning. If you would like more information, please contact me to discuss your requirements.

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupi...

Quotes to Inspire

"We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have learned to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart." (Scott)

"There are two aspects of providing occasions for wonderful ideas. One is being prepared to accept children's ideas. The other is providing a setting which suggests wonderful ideas to children." (Eleanor Duckworth)

"A child's curiosity and desire to do things himself are the definition of his capacity to learn without sacrificing any part of his whole development. Guidance can only heighten certain abilities at the expense of others, but nothing can heighten the full spectrum of his capabilities beyond its in-built limits. The price a child pays for being guided into what other think best for him (or themselves) is the diminution of his wholeness." (Jean Liedloff)

"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook." (Henry David Thoreau)

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all." (Jacob Hornberger)

"The primary goal is joyful living. All other goals are secondary. If meeting a goal means sacrificing joy, then find a better way to meet the goal." (Joyce Fetteroll)

“Train up a child in the way he should go — but be sure you go that way yourself.” (Charles Spurgeon)

"Everything big that occurred in the world occurred in someone's imagination." (Astrid Lindgren)

"The objective of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives." (Robert Maynard Hutchins)

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only, and that is to support the ultimate career." (C.S. Lewis)

"In all of life, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured." (Gordon B. Hinckley)

"My hope and wish is that one day, formal education will pay attention to what I call 'education of the heart.' Just as we take for granted the need to acquire proficiency in the basic academic subjects, I am hopeful that a time will come when we can take it for granted that children will learn, as part of the curriculum, the indispensability of inner values: love, compassion, justice and forgiveness." (The Dalai Lama)

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." (Albert Einstein)

"Many things we need can wait. The child cannot. Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed. To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today." (Gabriela Mistral)

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life." (Charlotte Mason)

We want our children to feel that each fresh lesson gives them an 'open sesame' to a fairy palace full of treasures worth the seeking; that they are the inheritors of all the heaped-up gains of past ages, not slaves doomed to a treadmill of weary monotony." (Kathleen Warren, 1903)

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." (Plutarch)

"The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think." (Bill Beattie)

"Tell me - I will forget. Show me - I may remember. Be with me - I will understand." (Tibetan Proverb)

"The world is not lacking in wonders but in a sense of wonder." (G.K. Chesterton)

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." (Wolfram Van Goethe)

"Wisdom begins with wonder." (Socrates)

“The wider the range of possibilities we offer children, the more intense will be their motivation and the richer their experiences.” (Loris Malaguzzi)